Monsters in Magazines. Diary of a designer doodler

Monsters in Magazines. Diary of a designer doodler

We’ve all doodled in magazines, unless you’re really into following rules or don’t have a pen handy. And one day after the mailman dropped off the mail, our boss Barb asked if anyone wanted this high-end furniture magazine. I’m not in-the-know about interior design so I wanted to see what prices things were going for. As I was flipping through the pages and comparing how a coffee table was worth more than my savings and checking accounts combined, I got the childhood urge to draw on the pages.

I noticed that some of the pieces of furniture (cabinets, rugs, bed stands, lamps, etc.) looked like creatures, so I began filling in a particularly monster-y rug. I drew scraggly fur around the edge of the rug, added some gnashing teeth, plopped in a big bulgy eye, and scratched on a couple of claws. Naturally this monster looked like it needed a couple of friends so I filled in the surrounding pieces of furniture with other ghouly and spooky critters. Thus my Monsters In Magazines was born.

I continued to draw throughout the rest of the magazine, filling the pages with my little monsters. They began to take on personalities of their own, and this kept me entertained until I realized that I had used up my lunch time on drawing cartoons.

Super worth it. Plus now I have a magazine full of adorable monsters playing on lamps and grabbing cookie jars off of cabinets.

I took my monsters one step further and painted them with bright and whimsical watercolors. Blobs of color were painted first, then after the paint dried an ultra-fine-tip Sharpie was used to bring the beasts to life. I created about twenty different little monsters and am thinking about how to use them. Perhaps a children’s book? Wrapping paper? Pattern for a tote bag? Who knows. For now, they’re living on my desk peeking from behind a stack of project folders and waiting to brighten someone’s day.

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